TEARS FOR SOUVENIRS - AND PLAYERS OF THE YEARS.

So I’m driving home last night. I’m driving home from the rainswept village of Glengarnock. It’s a tidy but depressing little nook of not-quite-Ayrshire and not-quite-Renfrewshire and everybody calls it Kilbirnie because that’s where 1977 Scottish Junior Cup winners Kilbirnie Ladeside play. I’m driving home from Kilbirnie Ladeside v Clydebank Juniors and I’m listening to Radio 2 at the only hour of the day in which it’s acceptable for a 38-year-old man with no children to be listening to BBC Radio 2. Mark Radcliffe’s not on tonight but, as the sun sets over Paisley and I fly over the fly-over by the airport, Stuart Marconie plays an old tune by ABC.

I love ABC. I love Martin Fry and I hate Kilbirnie and I hate Kilbirnie Ladeside. I’m a North Ayrshire boy and I’m an Ardrossan boy and I love Ardrossan Winton Rovers, I cant stand Saltcoats Victoria and I fucking HATE Kilbirnie Ladeside. To the extent that I’d never seen them play at home. At Valefield. Even when they played the Winton there. Despite the fact I once played amateurish pub football in the public parks behind Valefield. So I went there last night. Was quite depressed by the fact my move from Ayrshire to Glasgow still only leaves me 35 minutes away from Kilbirnie in the car. But I went there last night because I need to do five more grounds to join the 100 Grounds club. And I went there last night, to Valefield, to Kilbirnie, because I’m on a warm-down. Or is it withdrawals?

And ABC play TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH and the disturbing beauty and scale of Valefield and the fact of a night in the smirry rain and fresh-ish air and the knowledge that no-one cares about the game I’ve just been to - least of all me - meets head on with this beautifully powerful song and life is suddenly as golden as the Lamé suit Martin Fry wore on Top Of The Pops when I sat in front of a telly in Ardrossan thinking “fuck - I hate North Ayrshire. Surely Glasgow is as glamorous as ABC - it must be if Rangers live there”.

Tears are not enough. Indeed they ain’t. Yet for those of us who only cry in times of joy, season 2007/2008 is best represented by the key lyric from this heavenly melody from the stupendous Lexicon of Love album. “Tears for souvenirs”. Tears for fucking souvenirs. Making souvenirs of our tears. We have two trophies. We have the best defence in Europe (MY Europe!). We have all sorts of longevity records. But, most of all, The never-so-cheap-as-to-be-glamorous Gers took season 2007/2008 and made it more than mere trophies, more than petty silverware. They embedded a season in our hearts, in our souls and they dressed it in ermin and lace and a big Union Jack and they threw it over every Bear of a certain age like a blanket for our beds, like a security for our heads. Season 2007/2008 exhausted us, thrilled us, damn near killed us, moved us, drained us and infamed us … and will keep us warm forever.

I love Billy MacKenzie too. The Associates. Good pals of ABC - a good mate of Martin Fry’s. Working class lads escaping to a hedonism of art even more than the excesses of their fame. But it was knowing what was real, what was genuine, that enabled them to enjoy it while still making authentically brilliant music which lasts a life-time. Tears for Souvenirs. From North Ayrshire, from Renfrewshire, from Clydebank, from Dundee - from GOVAN: Don’t talk to us about “anti-football”. Don’t insult us with half-arsed Tim Lovejoy-esque pretensions of aesthetic appreciation. Don’t come at us with an expression coined by a 20-year-old millionaire whose led a cosited life and can’t take the fact he’s just been back-pocketed - try to think of your own term. Try to think for yourself. Try to be honest. It’s not our football you don’t like - it’s just Rangers. The footballing world fell upon Rangers over the last ten months and, starting with a 2-0 pre-season win over Champions League finalists Chelsea, we left most of that world hurting, most of it beaten and all of it in the sure knowledge they’d just been in a game and a half.

Kilbirnie Ladeside are a great junior club. ABC are a fantastic band and Rangers in 2007/2008 are a BEAUTIFUL football side. And I mean beautiful to WATCH as well as amazingly lovely to support. We want success as fans. We want those cups - yes - but more than that - more than that EVER, we just want to know our team is giving it their all to bring us that success. I’ve watched Laudrup and Gascoigne hiding. I’ve seen Amoruso and Butcher having nightmares at the back. I’ve witnessed Ally McCoist unable to buy a goal. This Rangers team, this season, had far fewer parts but gave more endeavour and heart than any I’ve seen in 31 years of visiting The Palace..

It’s surely then more appropriate than ever that I give this season’s FAT ECK.CO.UK PLAYER OF THE YEAR AWARD not to one man but two. Barry Ferguson was amazing until injury and perhaps a few other issues caught up with him. Steve Davis and Christian Dailly were great when they came in at January. Darcheville fought through injury to thrill us, Thomson grew into his role, Hemdani began as a Beckenbauer-esque interloper and everyone, at some point, no more than wee Nacho Novo, had a cameo or a spell when they carried the day and caught all our hearts. But it was the defence. It was Alan Hutton at first but then it got deeper. It was the defence. It was Alan McGregor - oh that save in Bremen, the best I’ve ever seen from a Rangers keeper - who began the magic at the back as he, and then, initially, Alexander, rose to the standards being set by the expensive departure and by the mainstays, the heart-beat, the CENTRE OF THE RANGERS DEFENCE (is there a more sacred area of the pitch at Ibrox??):

Carlos Cuellar AND Davie Weir are my men of the season, my players of the season, my two-man man of all the matches.

Cuellar and Weir. Weir and Cuellar. One couldn’t have done it without the other and we couldn’t yave done it without them both. I wish we’d bought Davie Weir ten years ago. Not just because we’d probably have won more but because - and this is where the “anti-football” jibe gets the kicking it deserves - because he’s a JOY TO WATCH. Carlos Cuellar is like having Davie Weir from ten years ago - except more athletic and therfore more spectacular to Davie’s relentless tidyness. The old jock makes it look easy - the young Spaniard makes it look breathtaking.

I went to see Kilbirnie Ladeside versus Clydebank. Was it a case of “warming down” before taking an entire week off from football and an entire two months off rom Rangers? Rather than jumping straight from the donner kebabs and Coca Cola of UEFA Cup finals and league deciders into the museli and melon medleys of cinema, gardening and long walks along the promenade, did I think it best to take it down a notch or two more gradually? Or is it that I needed ANY kind of live football fix. After a seaon of attending more than a fair share of Rangers’ record 68 games, did I find it impossible, like a junkie, to kick a habit which I knew was ruining my health and my sanity? When ye go from the Nou Camp and City of Manchester Stadium and Hampden to Kirkintilloch Rob Roy, Yoker Athletic and Kilbirnie Ladeside, is it the fitbaw fandom equivelant of injecting yer eyeballs and between yer toes coz THAT’S ALL THAT’S LEFT??? Is it?

No. Neither. It’s because I love football - at all levels and in all forms. I love watching football and I’ve even tried playing it once or a hundred times. I enlist myself in silly quests like “100 grounds” because, well, I just need an excuse to go see a game. Despite the best efforts of Peter Lawell, Rangers don’t actually play every day. Sometimes ye need the methodone of being a neutral fitbaw fan to fill in for the crack cocaine of Follow Following The Teds. I just love watching football. When you watch as much as I do, ye get to understand what a REAL team is about and what constiututes truly beautiful play and utterly thrilling spectacle. It’s knowing that - “fuck me - this team is never going to give up ANYTHING! Sometimes we’ll lose. Most times we’ll win but ALWAYS, we’ll fight til the end of the bit after the end.” THAT’s football heaven.

Trophies are the only judge of truly great teams. Of course they are - that’s why they’re there, competitions. This recently-departed season we didn’t win two trophies - three if you want to include the Champions League - and anything we did lift we didn’t win very easily. In fact we worked like fuck for every second of every game of every competition for the whole of a record-breakingly arduous season. I’ve never been prouder of any single Rangers side. I’ve never known a season which, whenever I have cause to reflect upon it in future years and decades, will touch my soul and the core of what I love about football and Rangers so very deeply. When they say “what about 2007/2008?”, when they ask “what about the year we nearly won the quadrouple?!”, the heart will lift and my spirit will soar more readily than if Martin Fry and the boys had just walked into my front room and started up a special live performance of the Lexicon of Love.

This last ten months weve been taught the lexicon of football bravery. It’s a language we just can’t speak enough. I’ve never been happier to confess to weeping tears of joy so often. And those tears are the greatest souvenirs of this team, The Rangers of 2007/2008.